“When will you come home?”
There is a house by the Adyar river that I often cross to get to South Chennai. It is one that Vasanth and I had once considered before moving into where we currently live. Nothing extraordinary. Just pipes and peeling white walls. The owner had said it would be repainted. “The previous owners didn’t really take care of the place well.” Nice view. Decent sunlight. Good bones. Sometimes an occasional stench from this long-abandoned river. But not our home.
Every time I cross, I wonder if we would have been different as people if we had chosen to live there. The answer is evident.
If you take a right on the national highway leading to Kanyakumari from Nagercoil, you will find yourself at a small village near Swami Thoppu called Vadakku Thamaraikulam, named after a village pond with several hundred lotuses. If you, like me, take pictures of the first small pond near the highway with similar lotuses, you are mistaken. The real deal arrives after a four-minute walk. It has an unremarkable beauty to it. Like fallen flower petals on a car after a light rain. It is nice. It is where Vasanth is from.
His house has a nelikkai (amla?) tree with needles, a neem tree that sheds too much, and a mango tree with sweet fruits in the summer.
It has taken years to build it up from scratch. A thattu or a first floor was constructed some years ago to accommodate the growing family. Today, the contours are changing again as plans are being drawn to expand the kitchen. It is aunty’s dream to have a longer counter and a bigger stove.
Ananya (Vasanth’s niece) and I have requested uncle not to cut down the neem tree that grows within the house’s premises. Our plea has been accepted and sanctioned. The house will grow around it despite the shedding.
Aunty and uncle have settled into a quiet routine everyday. They have walking friends, friends from CPI, and the occasional bad juju relative. They visit Chennai to see their granddaughter becoming a fine, young lady. When it is quiet, aunty reads and watches Malayalam films on Amazon Prime. Uncle watches videos on farming to ensure that the coconut yield in that small land this year, grows well and organically. “There is no point growing rice these days”.
Everyone speaks about how the river that flows by the village has gone to the dogs. “My brother and I learnt to swim here, you know,” says aunty. “Uncle, however, was never comfortable with Vasanth and Nila anywhere near a water body. That’s why they are both scared of swimming. What a waste. They don’t know how to live life to the fullest. I should have thought then, no?” she asks.
Vasanth is externally ambivalent and is yet to assign the word ‘love’ or ‘like’ towards this place that is his home. It is just the house he grew up in. It has changed and so has he. If I ask him today if he loves his house, he will reply “Of course”. But that’s it.
I walk into my house in Chennai and see that Amma has replaced an ancient abstract painting of Lord Ganesha with a bunch of heads from Sri Lanka to symbolise ‘good luck’.
Our doorbell was once distinct: like a lizard and a bird had a baby. Sounded terrible and was impossible to sneak friends and ahem.. significant others in. Today, it says the regular ‘ting tong’. The ceiling has to be painted because water seepage is an issue that persists in this 30-something building. Amma is growing old with it.
Until Anuchu moved back recently, I think Amma struggled a little with the silence. I left for Madurai, paati then went next to live with her husband during COVID, and Anuchu finally flew the nest to travel to Bengaluru, the promised land.
Amma would call Vasanth and me over for meals often but we’d only go when work was lax. It is not a nice thing to do, retrospectively.
Until we moved here, some 17 years ago (my god, how time flies), our house in Oliver Road with Appa, was what I truly considered home. So much love had gone into painting the walls with sponge. We had focus lights, a beautiful dining table, red sofa chairs that spin, and a study with peach and blue mica. Appa poured so much of himself into the house. We had to move when he died. Every step there reminded us of him.
Anuchu and I continue to marvel at its beauty today. When we drive past it to a breakfast spot that has opened near this house, I stare hard into the windows, now closed with red curtains, to see if I can sneak a peek. No amount of laser-sharp focus moves the cloth.
In the current house which I think of as Amma’s, there are two full-length mirrors and closet space for four families. It’s clean and mostly free of dust. Amma would yell at us for throwing our school bags on the sofa and running away to meet friends or play. “Who will keep this inside the room? Your mother-in-law?”. Today she throws her bag in the same spot. She doesn’t get yelled at though.
“I’m thinking of switching the doorbell back to the old one. I’m not able to hear this new silent and normal one,” she says. We laugh. Something should fundamentally not change.
Vasanth and I are a consequence of these two houses we grew up at. Our own place has many bits and bobs, several dusty shelves, hundreds of books and a cupboard full of paper and plastic covers to last us a lifetime. “What if we have to move and we need the bags,” Vasanth asks. We have never attempted to clean it.
We’ve hung Vasanth’s beautiful pictures that he clicked at Hampi, his favourite location in all of India, in the hall. Some pictures I painted are up too. Our furniture is gifts from sisters and aunts. Some bowls, mugs and Tupperware from friends. There is usually great coffee, a constant supply of eggs, some onion, tomatoes and garlic. You can find my medals hanging with my clothes behind the door. All the lights are yellow because who likes tube lights (Vasanth does. He is an old man).
There are newspapers everywhere. We subscribe to four. Vasanth plans on getting two more. He is single-handedly helping the print industry run. We argue everyday about when it will go to the kabadiwala. “Are you building a tower with these papers?” I ask. “Tomorrow, I promise,” he says. It has been seven weeks.
A pigeon hoots by my window at 5.30 each morning. I shoo it away by banging a book to scare it. It returns each morning with the hope of a building a nest. I do not endose this house-within-a-house situation. I might murder the pigeon someday. Our plants sometimes die but many are alive. Touch wood.
I’d like to think that Vasanth and I are a consequence of this house. It is tightly knit in chaos, friendship and a lazy stillness. Despite the fact that dust has settled four years on, sunlight floods the house every morning. I love it. Vasanth occasionally says “It’s nice, this house” of his own accord. It’s how he loves.
“When will you come home,” I ask every time he is at work. “Leaving in 15. Can’t wait to come and crash,” he says. This is it. This is our home.
Would Vasanth and I be different in that house at Kotturpuram by the Adyar river? Yes. Are we happy that it is not the case? Yes.
